I was asked to do some arranging on the Johnny Borrell ( Razorlight ) track ‘Carrickfurgus’ which was in the demo stage at the time. Nick had the files which were in a pretty basic state with some loops and a vocal track and a rough sketch of the chords.

We eventually decided to re-record the entire track and just keep the vocal and ended up co-producing the track together. Nick took care of the engineering and mixing duties and I arranged the music and eventually ended up playing or programming all the instrumentation!

The whole thing was done in one day from start to finish in Studio 2 at Air.

It was only the fact I saw the track in my inbox that I remembered it. I went on iTunes and sure enough there it was. The album features tracks from KT Tunstall, Yusif Islam, Hot Chip, The Go! Team and Will.i.am to name a few. It’s called Amazon Tribe – Songs for Survival and is available from all good music retailers.

On a guitar note, I used my fantastic Atkin ‘Dreadnought’ for the acoustics ( and percussion! ) and my Telecaster though an old Vox AC30 with a Custom Audio Electronics boost pedal by MXR for the electrics.

Go out and buy it, it’s for a good cause! Did I mention we all did it for free!

I was great to sit around and talk about guitar to a bunch of guitar heads as it’s something I don’t get to do all that often. Still too busy to teach now…which is great!

Here’s me back when I was teaching. As you can see I really loved it!!!!

Carleen Anderson was also there giving a vocal masterclass too. She’s about the only musician I’ve ever been a bit starstruck with as I just think she’s bloody amazing!

Now I think about it I might do some practice!

The whole thing was in aid of the NSPCC which is a great cause. It’s apparently the first time that there has been this sort of musical extravaganza at a catwalk show so it was cool to be involved. The music varied from South American rap, classical, rock and funk. The whole thing was conducted by top man Mark Stephenson. All in all a fun night.

It was attended by lots of famous people ( yawn! ) including Claudia Schiffer, the Jagger mob and I think I even saw Nigel from Eastenders ( from back in the day )!

Here’s a pic of with some of the band. From left to right: Ana Paula Aranjo, Fernanda Bussinger, Gabriel Currington ( composer ), me, Martin Goulding, Bellatrix, Alyusha Chagrin.

When David Arnold said, “Fancy playing some guitar on the new Bond film?”. I said, “Yes please!”.

My main contribution is to the ‘Boat chase’ scene which is pretty rocked out. The idea was to double up the orchestral parts David had written to generally beef things up. Lots of tempo changes, time signitures, low tunings and double tracking later it was done. Finally last week I went to the mix and it sounds massive!!!! Can’t wait to see it in a cinema!

I got this picture off a blog. Apparently that’s their boat in the background! Random!!!

Many thanks and much respect to David for giving me a chance to do this. Also Rob Playford and Steve Hilton who work with David on the scores. It really doesn’t get much bigger or cooler than working on a Bond film. It’s part of cinema history and probably the first thing I learn’t on the guitar.

To top it it all off on Saturday night I went along to the recording of the theme tune for the credits. Written by Monty Norman it has to be one of the most recognisable pieces of music ever and being in the room while a 76 piece orchestra played it was totally overwhelming.

All in all probably one of the best musical experiences so far!!!

‘The Quantum of Solice’ is out in cinemas November 2008. Go see it!

Needless to say I’m absolutely shattered. I took the ‘Extreme Rock’ class with sixteen students with fast fingers and loud amps!!! Good lord!! For our final performance we played ‘The Trooper’ by Iron Maiden and ‘Crazy Train’ by Ozzy Osbourne. It was awesome. They worked really hard and melted some faces with some great solos.

Couldn’t have done it without a great staff. Here’s a pic of me and fellow tutors having a well earned beer. From left to right. Me, Daniel Johnson (Level 1 guitar), Andy Moore (Level 2 guitar), Cath Stephens (Vocals), Jamie McCredie (Level 3 guitar)..Missing are Mathew Browell (Bass) and Ian Halford (Drums).

Everyone worked really hard and made it a great week for the kids. Now I need to sleep!!!